s from giving way, my chin from dropping, and my eyes from
closing.

And in that disorderly room, where the servants were already hastening
quietly to clear the table and make ready for the evening meal, I
lingered almost alone, not knowing whether I was happy or unhappy, not
knowing what was real and what was supernatural.

Then I understood. It came upon me softly, heavily. I looked around
at all those simple, peaceful things. Then I closed my eyes, and said
to myself, like a seer who gradually becomes conscious of the nature of
the revelation he has seen, "The infinite--why, this is the infinite.
It is true. I can no longer doubt." It came upon me with force that
there is nothing strange on earth, that the supernatural does not
exist, or, rather, that it is everywhere. It is in reality, in
simplicity, in peace. It is here, inside these walls. The real and
the supernatural are one and the same. There can no more be mystery in
life than there can be a fourth dimension.

I, like other men, am moulded out of infinity. But how confused it all
was to me! And I dreamed of myself, who could neither know myself well
nor rid me of myself--myself who was like a deep shadow between my heart
and the sun.

CHAPTER VII

The same background, the same half-light tarnishing them as when I
first saw them together. Amy and her lover were seated beside each
other, not far from me.

They seemed to have been talking for some time already.

She was sitting behind him, on the sofa, concealed by the shadow of the
evening and the shadow of the man. He was bending over, pale and
vaguely outlined, with his hands on his knees.

The night was still cloaked in the grey silken softness of evening.
Soon it would cast off this mantle and appear in all its bare darkness.
It was coming on them like an incurable illness. They seemed to have a
presentiment of it and sought refuge from the fatal shadows in talking
and thinking of other things.

They talked apathetically about this and that. I heard the names of
places and people. They mentioned a railway station, a public walk, a
florist.

All at once she stopped and hid her face in her hands.

He took her wrists, with a sad slowness that showed how much he was
used to these spells, and spoke to her without knowing what to say,
stammering and drawing as close as he could to her.

"Why are you crying? Tell me why you are crying."

She did not answer. Then she took